Poland's KGHM expects production at Chilean mine to start this month

WARSAW, July 17 (Reuters) - Polish mining company KGHM
said it expected to start production this month from
its Sierra Gorda mine in Chile, one of the world's largest
copper projects, as its bet to expand globally is soon to boost
sales.

KGHM, Europe's second-biggest copper producer, acquired the
then unfinished project two years ago. It became a symbol of the
move by Polish industry to the global stage after years of
struggling with the transition from Communist rule.

Since the acquisition, however, the cost of getting
production underway at Sierra Gorda, exceeding $4 billion, has
been over a third more than KGHM initially expected, while
falling global copper prices have hit its profits.

"Construction is finished. I think that this month we'll see
the first production of copper ore, and maybe we'll also see the
first sales," KGHM Chief Executive Herbert Wirth told a news
conference in the Polish capital on Thursday.

KGHM acquired the project in 2012 as part of a C$3 billion
($2.8 billion) purchase of Canada's Quadra FNX, now named KGHM
International. That deal allowed it to book the
world's fourth-largest copper deposits.

KGHM controls 55 percent of the Chilean project, and
Japanese partner Sumitomo holds the rest.

The plan is for Sierra Gorda to produce 217,000 tonnes of
copper by 2018, which would account for one third of the group's
copper output.